#StepItUp4Gender, #PledgeForParity is the theme for International Women’s Day 2016. Beyond just talking, purposeful action needs to be taken by women and men together to advance gender parity. The focus of IOM’s intervention in 2016 as co-leader of the Camp Coordination and Camp Management (CCCM) Cluster is contributing to the prevention of and response to GBV throughout its interventions in camp and camp-like settings.

The United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women, UN Women, strongly condemns the murder on 3 March of indigenous leader, environmentalist and defender of human rights, Berta Cáceres, who was shot in her home in the city of La Esperanza in western Honduras.

"I was unaware of the fact that young people have the right to decide freely on matters related to their sexuality and that sexual and reproductive rights are basic human rights," said Barun Kuinkel, age 17, after attending a sexual and reproductive health outreach session led by a peer educator from Y-PEER Nepal.

On 26 February, a Guatemalan court convicted two former military officers of crimes against humanity against 11 indigenous Q'eqchi' women who were subjected to sexual violence, sexual and domestic slavery, the forced disappearance of their husbands, as well as the murder and cruel treatment of a woman and her two small daughters.

The Bondage of Culture, a nine-minute film on female genital mutilation (FGM) by Kenyan journalist Diana Kendi, was selected as the winner of the first annual Efua Dorkenoo Pan Africa Award for Reportage on FGM.

SHABWAH, Yemen - The nearly year-old conflict in Yemen has now embroiled 21 of the country's 22 governorates, civilian casualties are increasingly common, food is in short supply and many hospitals, police stations and other institutions essential for protecting and caring for the population, especially women and girls, have been forced to shut their doors.

The official opening of the Uganda Women's Situation Room was held on 15 February 2016 at the Sheraton Hotel in Kampala. The Women's Situation Room is an early warning and rapid response mechanism against violence arising before, during and after elections.

The United Nations is working to ensure that the victims involved in four new allegations of sexual exploitation and abuse involving UN peacekeepers in the Central African Republic (CAR) have access to the help they need, a spokesperson for the world body said today.

It was after midnight and Bibi Gul* was in critical condition when her husband and eldest daughter brought her to a hospital in Balkh, a province in northern Afghanistan. When the nurses examined her, they discovered that her body was covered in deep purple bruises, and that naswar, a powdered tobacco snuff, had been forced into her vagina.